While Summerland still awaits its own bus service, officials with B.C. Transit are undertaking a study into the future of the service in the region.
Municipal administrator Tom Day said the plan is examining the needs and the delivery of the service over a 25-year period.
One issue which will be contemplated is a study of whether the various community-based transit services in the South Okanagan are best served through a combined authority or whether they are best managed independently.
“It would be an opportunity for Transit to lay out the pros and cons of a more regional system,” Day said.
If transit is delivered regionally, the service would require fewer spare buses than if each community service had a spare bus of its own.
However, the individual transit services give each community greater control over the costs of delivering the service.
In the South Okanagan, communities with transit systems in place are in charge of managing the services independently.
In the Central Okanagan, one system controls all bus service from Lake Country to Peachland.
Day said the study will not affect whether Summerland will receive its transit or how the service will be structured in the long term.
After years of requesting the service, Summerland has been promised a bus service this fall.
The service will provide weekday bus service between Summerland and Penticton four times a day in each direction.
Details of the transit service have not yet been determined.